"More than 40 percent of the world's spam is coming from a single network of computers that computer security experts continue to battle, according to new statistics from Symantec's MessageLabs' division. The Rustock botnet has shrunk since April, when about 2.5 million computers were infected with its malicious software that sent about 43 billion spam e-mails per day. Much of it is pharmaceutical spam."

"Google could be adding the ability to make phone calls from the Google Chat interface. Google is testing a Web-based service within Gmail that will allow users to place phone calls from their in-boxes. It's launched from the Google Chat window on the lower left-hand side of a Gmail page and allows users to place and receive calls from within their contacts through a user interface that strongly resembles the one used in Google Voice."

"The term 'supercomputing' usually evokes images of large, expensive computer systems that calculate unfathomable algorithms and run on enough energy to support a small city. Now, imagine a supercomputer, but run on the electrical equivalent of three standard-size coffee-makers. This year's international supercomputing conference, SC10, will feature the Student Cluster Competition that challenges students to build, maintain, and run the most-cutting edge, commercially available high-performance computing (HPC) architectures on just 26 amps of energy."

"A few lucky British students are taking a computing class at the National Museum of Computing (TNMOC) at Bletchley Park using 30-year-old or older machines. From the article: "'The computing A-level is about how computers work and if you ask anyone how it works they will not be able to tell you,' said Doug Abrams, an ICT teacher from Ousedale School in Newport Pagnell, who was one of the first to use the machines in lessons. For Mr Abrams the old machines have two cardinal virtues; their sluggishness and the direct connection they have with the user. 'Modern computers go too fast,' said Mr Abrams. 'You can see the instructions happening for real with these machines. They need to have that understanding for the A-level.'"

"Google could be adding the ability to make phone calls from the Google Chat interface. Google is testing a Web-based service within Gmail that will allow users to place phone calls from their in-boxes. It's launched from the Google Chat window on the lower left-hand side of a Gmail page and allows users to place and receive calls from within their contacts through a user interface that strongly resembles the one used in Google Voice."

0.1$ to call a landline in lebanon
0.19$ to call a cellphone. pretty cheap.
edit: i just called my own cellphone, it indicated +974000 as the calling number +974 is Qatar as i checked. the good thing is that this is a new way of calling someone and hiding you number.

"Two different viruses have been used to create the cathode and anode for a lithium-ion battery. If research pans out, the parts could be grown in and harvested from tobacco plants and then woven into or sprayed onto clothing to power a wide range of electronic devices."

"Although it won't help Linux run Windows-specific software applications, this easy hack produces an Ubuntu desktop that looks and feels a lot like Windows 7. It's particularly suitable for reviving older PCs or laptops on which the main activities will be web-browsing, email, document writing, and streaming music and videos from from the web. The process installs a Windows 7-like GNOME theme on an otherwise standard Ubuntu 10.04 installation, although it might work on other Linux distros with GNOME and appropriate other packages installed. Naturally all this begs the question: why would anybody want to do this? Why indeed!" People have been doing this sort of look-and-feel swap-out for years; it seems best to me as a practical joke.

"In 2010, 25 percent of new worms have been specifically designed to spread through USB storage devices connected to computers, according to PandaLabs. This distribution technique is highly effective. With survey responses from more than 10,470 companies across 20 countries, it was revealed that approximately 48 percent of SMBs (with up to 1,000 computers) admit to having been infected by some type of malware over the last year. As further proof, 27 percent confirmed that the source of the infection was a USB device connected to a computer."

Intel Plans Large Price Cut for Core i7-950 Processors
"Now that Computex has come and gone, it appears that hardware makers and PC suppliers are also apparently ready to enjoy some rest. For the most part, companies have only started shipping previously announced products or unveiled future plans that won't actually have any bearing on the market itself for a few weeks, at the very least. It is rumored that Intel will drop the price on the Core i5-950 CPU from $562 to under $300 at the end of August. The Core i7-950 is a quad-core model, with eight threads and an L3 cache memory of 8MB. Furthermore, the CPU has a thermal design power (TDP) of 130W and should be able to go as low as $294 when being put up for order. As such, the tag of Core i7-930 is bound to drop to $284.

Intel, apparently, is thinking of drastically altering the pricing scheme for one of its most powerful central processing units. If what hkepc says is to be believed, the part's price will plummet by almost half of what it currently costs. If true, then the chip immediately under it may also drop in price, in order to maintain their appeal on their respective target consumer bases. This will come to pass just around the same time as the upcoming Core i3-560, with a frequency of 3.33GHz, is slated to make it into stores. The CPU whose price will drop from the current $562 to under $300 is the Core i5-950. "

"The New York Times reports that the Pentagon has confirmed that, in 2008, a foreign agent instigated 'the most significant breach of US military computers ever' using a USB flash drive. While the breach was previously reported on Wired and the LA Times, this is the first official confirmation of the attack that led to the banning of USB drives on government computers."